On set or off, Mary-Kate Olsen floats effortlessly above the craziness

Mary-Kate Olsen is reading the fine print. We are at a trapeze school in midtown Manhattan, and she has in her diminutive lap the release form that the school has given her in order to indemnify itself against any personal injuries that its students might incur during class. I had scribbled my initials in all the myriad boxes required without reading one syllable on the page. But not the meticulous Mary-Kate. She refuses to be hurried, though she is horribly jet-lagged from a quick business trip to Asia to publicize her two clothing lines, the Row—which consists of high-end sophisticated separates in a minimal palette, such as cashmere French-seam T-shirts, well-cut blazers, leather pants, and banded miniskirts à la Hervé Léger—and Elizabeth and James, which includes contemporary androgynous designs inspired by some of the vintage pieces that Mary-Kate and her sister Ashley own. Indeed, she and Ashley closely oversee the operations of both brands, with Mary-Kate focusing on Elizabeth and James and Ashley focusing on the Row. Both sisters conceive and sketch out designs for both lines (collaborating with designer Jane Siskin on Elizabeth and James). The lines are the Olsens' latest wildly successful business endeavors, in addition to Dualstar Entertainment Group, their billion-dollar conglomerate.

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Mary-Kate's many bracelets jangle as she runs her multiringed hand across the words of the trapeze-school document. Poor thing, I think, even having fun is a contractual transaction. "Don't worry. I kind of like reading the fine print," she says, as if reading my mind as well while she squints at the legalese through the gigantic, round sunglasses that obscure her beauty and make her appear like a douroucouli with a rather devilish sense of fashion. "I've spent my whole life reading it," she says, initialing the last box.

"Do you feel you're sexy?" I ask. "The affirmations you get as a child star are so different from the ones I presume one seeks as a woman."

"I feel like I can be sexy when I want to be," she says. "I think all women are sexy. Some may feel it more than others. I personally think the women who are the most sexy are the women who are truly themselves, whatever that may be."

Sir Ben Kingsley, whose sexually charged scene with Olsen in the film The Wackness has been much discussed, was captivated by her. "She was a joy to work with," he says. "An utter professional. There was a liquidlike quality to her character that Mary-Kate innately has as well. Not mercurial, exactly, but lovelier than that. Yes, liquid is the word I'm looking for. I was quite taken by her, especially how astute she is about art. We spent a lot of time between takes talking about her art collection."

It is this highly honed visual sense that drives Mary-Kate in each of her endeavors. About designing, she says, "The process can start from anything—an object, a color, an era, a place, history. From there, usually silhouettes come into play. They can be inspired from architecture, costumes, et cetera." Her vast art collection is her prized possession. "All I really need is my bed and my art around me," she says, adding that her pieces include, among many others, works by Warhol, German photographer Thomas Ruff, and the controversial Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, known for his pictures of women in different states of nakedness, bound in the Japanese rope-tying art of kinbaku. I can't get the image of Mary-Kate lying alone in bed, gazing at one of Araki's erotic arrangements of flesh and rope, out of my mind. It is as mysteriously tender as an Araki photograph itself.

Ring two of her circuslike life is celebrity. The luxuries it affords her are no doubt appreciated. The invasions of her privacy are not. The most recent examples of this were the stories that accompanied the heartbreaking news of Heath Ledger's death. The masseuse who discovered his body called Mary-Kate before she called the paramedics, and Mary-Kate sent her bodyguards to the loft to suss out the situation. Her name was subsequently mentioned in practically every press account of the story, publicity of a different order from the rumors of her romantic life, late-night partying at trendy Manhattan clubs, or any falling-out that she and Ashley might be having regarding Dualstar. Of course, none of that was the issue. Ledger, one of her friends, had lost his life. "I'm not going to comment on that," she says. "I won't give you a word about that in the nicest way possible. Let's move on."

Moving on is what she has learned to do when problems have cropped up in her mostly charmed life. Right before she started at NYU, it was reported that she suffered from an eating disorder and spent time in a rehab facility. "I have never talked about that, either, or been quoted about that," she says, pausing to take a long breath and drawing on her reserves of patience. "Look, I think it's important that what anybody goes through—and I'm not saying that it's true or not true—you realize it's part of growing up. Everybody is going to go through hard times. It's a part of life. I think the hardest part to get to is that point of asking for help or reaching out to other people and being honest with yourself. I do not want to go through my life with my eyes shut. And I don't want to go through it with a closed mind. I want to be aware of things. And I'd rather know than not know."

I ask if she has ever felt the need to see a shrink. "Yeah. I talk with people. I think it's important. I wouldn't call 'em a shrink, but it's good to have communication with whomever, whether it's a mentor or a therapist or a psychiatrist, whether it's your mom or your dad or your best friend. I think at some point I had to say that I deserve to be happy. As Diane would say, it was okay to love myself and be my best friend. I think everyone deserves that." She takes another deep breath. "It's weird to be called a celebrity or talk about it. I don't talk about being a celebrity in my business meetings. I don't talk about it with my friends. It's not a part of my life. It's a media perception of who I am. It's very weird. I mean, if I see a paparazzi shot of me walking that's in a magazine or something at some event, it's as if I see it from an outsider's point of view. There's like a character, almost, and then there's me. I think it's kind of entertaining. No. Sorry. To be written about—that aspect—I don't think anybody should have to live that way, when people are trying to pry into your life. You give, you give, you give. You talk, you talk, you talk. And at a certain point, you start to keep your mouth shut, and then people freak out about that."

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Chancing that she herself will freak out, I ask if her perceived celebrity plays havoc with her romantic life. She's been rumored lately to have dated New York artist Nate Lowman, as well as Fiat heir Lapo Elkann. "One week it's that one. One week it's another," she says, adding that both guys are just friends. "It's a good story, don'tcha know?" Is it harder for her to find a date because she's rich and famous? "Well, first of all, that's a weird question. Let's start with the words rich and famous. Those are weird words." She doesn't think of herself as rich and famous? "No. But it's nobody's business if I am or I'm not. I mean, if you want to have a discussion about fame and what does it really mean to be famous these days, what's celebrity anymore, what's media? That's different. I have a completely different point of view about all this because I was never thrown into it. I grew up in it. It wasn't something that I aspired to. It's just something I knew. For me, I just worked. I had a job. I've had a job for 21 years."

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Ring three: actress. "Mary-Kate was so charming and delightful when she came in to meet with us about the part of Tara, the pot-smoking born-again Christian in Weeds," says Jenji Kohan, the creator of the Showtime series. "This was not stunt casting. We don't do that. Mary-Kate was simply the best person for the role. And she was such a great sport about it all. That first meeting was just an interview. We sat around and talked. But after she left, we were all so impressed by her that we called her at home and asked if she would mind getting back in her car and coming right back to see us to do an audition that same day. We didn't know how she'd react. Some people of her status would have been insulted by such a request. But she drove all the way back and did a cold reading for us. She didn't even have a chance to prepare the scene. By the time she left the second time, we knew we had found our Tara."

Jonathan Levine, the writer and director of The Wackness, had the same reaction to Mary-Kate's professionalism and lack of diva demeanor. "She's wise beyond her years," he says, "and yet is so cool; she's the kind of person you long for in a best friend. Part of what she did in her portrayal of Union," he says of the Ecstasy-popping sex kitten in his coming-of-age movie, "is that she refocused her own charisma and special energy and harnessed it to put into her characterization.

I wasn't sure she would take the part, because it's a small one, but I think she maybe was looking for some street cred by being in this edgy independent film. Maybe it's from having grown up on sets, but the crew loved her. I'd be looking around for her between takes, and I'd find her over at the craft services area hanging around the grips and other technicians. She was just one of the guys."

Both of these roles are young women who do drugs. Was this a conscious choice to break away from her squeaky-clean image as a child star? "No, they were just great scripts," Mary-Kate says, giving me that wan smile and turning the conversation back to the audition process and people's perception of her. "My whole thing is being who I am, and in that regard, it works against me in a lot of ways going on auditions. People expect one thing from me."

"What?" I ask.

"I'm not sure. Most of the time the feedback I get is, I can't believe she was the way she was, that she was normal. I just don't think they know what to expect, exactly."

Kingsley will always be smitten with her. After being straddled by her in a phone booth in The Wackness, he's become an expert on her generosity as an actress. "I have this metaphor for screen acting," he tells me. "It's like swinging on the trapeze and letting go. The moments between `action' and `cut' are those `ahh' moments when you're hanging in the air without holding on before you're caught by the other trapeze artist or you've fallen to the net. It's all about trust and that sense of flying. Mary-Kate is willing to take that risk of flying through the air with you."

Which brings us back to our trapeze class. We have each already climbed way up onto the platform several times and swung through the air upside down and somersaulted into the net. Now it's time for Mary-Kate to head up the ladder once more to be caught by an instructor waiting for her on another trapeze. It calls for perfect timing and even more courage. "Aren't you just a little afraid?" I ask as she chalks up her hands at the base of the ladder.

"Nothing scares me," she says, waving to her driver and bodyguard, who have been taking pictures of this latest bit of derring-do in their charge's life.

"For you not to feel scared, do you have to feel safe?" I ask, nodding to her bodyguard. "Is it possible for you to feel safe outside the bubble of your cosseted life?"

"To be honest—how can I put this?—I think sometimes there's a certain safety in not feeling safe. I don't want to ever feel too safe. I mean, with my close friends and family, it's important to feel safe. But do I feel safe up there on that trapeze? No! I think you just have to feel not safe, exactly, but comfortable. Comfortable enough, like right now at this trapeze school, to let go when somebody says, `Jump.' "

She's ready to take another leap. I watch her climb the ladder. She reaches the platform and leans into the void. She grabs hold of the trapeze and glides fearlessly into the air. The instructor on the other trapeze shouts for her to let go. She does, and they complete a perfect catch in midair on the first try. She then falls effortlessly down onto the net below and crawls over to me. A smile erupts across her face. There is nothing wan about it.

Believe me, trapeze school was Mary-Kate's idea. I had e-mailed her a few days before and suggested we see the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha at the Met or peruse the Christian Louboutin show at the FIT museum. "I don't know," she tells me now, handing the release form back to the receptionist. "I was sitting in China, and I thought: trapeze class!" That one sentence—absurdly fabulous and fearless at once—pretty much sums up this 22-year-old child-woman in my presence. Again she reads my mind. "I know. Kooky, huh?" she confesses. "Almost crazy. Almost." She kicks off her YSL heels and removes her sunglasses to stare up at the trapeze high above us with her lovely tired eyes. She contemplates the almost-craziness of it all. "I wonder what would happen if I just quit everything and joined the circus," she says softly.

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"Honey, your life is enough of a circus already," I tell her.

"No shit," she says.

"Mary-Kate is fragile yet strong," says Diane von Furstenberg, whom Olsen interviewed for the upcoming coffee-table book Influence, an anthology of interviews, photographs, and artwork that she and Ashley are compiling as part of their publishing agreement with Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin's Young Readers Group. Von Furstenberg, perhaps seeing a lot of herself in Mary-Kate—a fierce ambition tempered by empathy; a talent for business tethered to an artistic spirit—has become a kind of mentor for her. "She's an old soul in a very young girl," the designer says. "Hers is a story that has just begun."

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And yet its narrative has been a part of pop culture for all of her 22 years, ever since she and her sister alternated playing the role of Michelle Tanner on TV's Full House from the age of nine months until they were nine. They parlayed that role through their childhoods and tween and teenage years into an array of business endeavors that formed the basis of Dualstar. When they were four years old, their father hired lawyer Robert Thorne to run the company; the twins ousted Thorne when they turned 18 and became copresidents themselves. It was Thorne who persuaded ABC to raise the toddlers' Full House salary from $4,000 to $25,000 an episode; by the series' end, they were reportedly up to $150,000 an episode. Their first ABC special was such a hit for the network that, at six, the twins earned executive producer credits, making them two of the youngest EPs ever. Thorne's business negotiations on their behalf made merchandising history: 45 direct-to-video films that reportedly grossed more than $750 million, three musical videos that went multiplatinum, 14 albums, a website, a video game venture, a line of dolls from Mattel, a library of Olsen twin books, and a fashion line sold through Wal-Mart that included accessories and cosmetics that, according to news reports, made more than $500 million back in 2003. Now that they're grown-ups, the Olsens are using their intrinsic fashion sense and business expertise to expand the success of the Row (launched in 2006) and Elizabeth and James (2007), which are sold at stores worldwide.

That's the first ring of Mary-Kate's three-ring-circus life: her role as fashion designer and savvy businesswoman. But at times it has seemed as if she has morphed into the product itself. "Oh, yeah," she agrees. "The year before Ashley and I went to college, we thought, We've had it. We so needed a break. I just wanted a change." Her parents—Dave, formerly a mortgage banker, and Jarnette, an ex–ballet dancer, who divorced when Mary-Kate and Ashley were nine—were understanding and knew it was time for their daughters to leave Sherman Oaks, California, and set out on a life of their own. Though anyone who allows infants to be cast on a sitcom could be accused of being a "stage parent," Dave and Jarnette always insisted that Mary-Kate and Ashley experience a regular childhood; rather than having the girls tutored on sets, they enrolled them in Campbell Hall Episcopal School in North Hollywood. Plus, there were other children at home who ensured the girls wouldn't be too spoiled; siblings have a way of not seeing other siblings as pampered stars. The twins have one older brother and a younger sister (for whom the line Elizabeth and James was named). Dave has two other children from his second marriage. "I grew up going to regular school and still have friends from that time in my life," Mary-Kate says of her years at Campbell Hall. "And as crazy and hardworking as my life has been, my parents knew how important it was to have a normal life as well. I grew up in a big family. And although I was always surrounded by a lot of adults [in show business], my big hobby was horseback riding, so I was surrounded by all my horseback riding friends, too. I was surrounded by people who cared about me and loved me."

Did she ever feel lonely when she and Ashley moved east to attend NYU? It was such a drastic break from her Southern California existence. "Everybody has their down times when they feel alone," she tells me. "But I think alone time is good. When we were interviewing Diane [von Furstenberg] for our book, she said it's important to take time for yourself in order to replenish yourself."

The NYU experience wasn't all great. When some of their fellow students began selling information about them to the tabloids, she and her sister no longer felt safe there. They returned to what they knew best: business.

Do profit motives complicate or even cause sibling rivalry? "We don't agree all the time. The way we go about business or designing or making a decision is that we come at it from two completely different angles that at the end of the day, even when we don't think we're agreeing with each other, we are agreeing. We're just getting there in different ways. Unless you're a twin, you honestly can't know how close twins can be. There's such a strength, but that also makes it..." Her voice trails off. "When there's that much love there's..." Again she stops. She gives me a wan smile. I attempt to help her explain: When twins grow up and go their separate ways, is it like an amicable divorce? "Well, there's the opposite of everything, but it stems from love, and it stems from passion. We're driven people. I do know I can't work in an office. Ashley, on the other hand, loves going to an office."

Mary-Kate is considered the artsier of the two sisters. Her own fashion sense borders on the eccentric, but when everyone strives to look like everyone else, such individuality is what the fashion world sorely needs. In staking out her style she has become the latest in a long line of fashion It Girls that includes Suzy Parker, Ali MacGraw, Penelope Tree, Edie Sedgwick, and Isabella Blow. For some, the It-ness proved tragic. For others, it was their blue-bloodedness that caused the excitable covey known as the fashion flock to flutter about them. But Mary-Kate is an anomaly in this lineage. She is not only a tastemaker but also a taste macher. And yet she dresses with an abandon that borders on indifference. In fact, her style has been referred to as "bag-lady chic." "Boho chic, you mean?" she asks. Whatever the word, her look is certainly singular and disproves the dictum that designer clothes must be worn by the deliriously tall, since Mary-Kate is barely five feet without the help of her YSL heels.

"I love a tiny woman in Chanel," Karl Lagerfeld says. "Coco herself was tiny, so you don't need to be a giant to look good in these. I like the way M.K. is mixing Chanel with other things. Life is not a fashion show, and I find a total designer look boring."

Lauren Hutton, who modeled for the Row's spring '08 lookbook, says, "I feel like M.K. is a kindred spirit. She lives an experimental life. When you're young, you should be trying on lots of things, not just clothes. She understands that. You're not born with taste. That's a bunch of hooey. Like everything else, taste is a process of discovery. I like that about her. She's always discovering her tastes."

"Mary-Kate has an innate sense of style that follows no rules," designer Giambattista Valli says. "Her personal style surpasses fashion. I'd like to design a couture gown for her that she can wear then cut into a minidress or a fantastic sleeping bag."

Mary-Kate describes her casual attitude toward fashion this way: "I don't know—you're either on the worst-dressed list or you've started a fashion trend. I think there's a real disconnect between the media's perception of fashion and the fashion world's idea of fashion. I don't know why I wear some of the things I wear. I like wearing crazy things sometimes. I like being playful. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing dress-up and becoming a character. It's sort of like an art. It can change your mood or the way that people are attracted to you."